Modeling search and rescue, medical disaster team response and transportation of patients in Ishinomaki city after tsunami disaster

The 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake caused massive devastation and numerous affected people. In particular, the Ishinomaki area of the Miyagi Prefecture was one of the hardest hit areas during the event. In addition, due to tsunami inundation, several medical facilities were destroyed or inactive at the time. The Ishinomaki Red Cross Hospital served as the last bastion to respond and attend injuries and illnesses in the disaster. We aim to build an agent-based model of triage and transportation of patients to the hospital. The individual and joint activities of response teams were considered to build the agent architecture and they were incorporated into the model. We model the first three days of response activities within the central Ishinomaki area and evaluated the number of patients transported to the hospital including their evaluated health status. We discuss here the case closest to the 2011 event and evaluate the strategies for search and rescue and patient transportation to speed up medical response in the aftermath of a disaster.